Thanks guys. I'm interested to see how this wood looks with the finish put on. The wood is already beautiful but the finish will probably make the grain pop and slightly darken the color. I'll post a picture when I get the finish applied.

Here's the tiki with the finish applied. I have to say that I'm very happy with the way this tiki turned out. It turned out even better then I imagined. This wood is beautiful with the finish put on. The wood has a warm elegant color. Almost a rich gold whisky color with orange. It's no wonder jewelry is sometimes made with this kind of wood. Pictures don't do the color or grain patterns justice.

I'm getting ready to start my next tiki carving. I just thought I would post a preview of what kind of wood I'll be carving. I'm going to be carving a piece of Quina. I like this piece of wood do to the white stripe running down the center of it. That's going to add some unique character to this tiki. This time I'm posting a side by side picture of the finished example tiki that I'm basing this tiki from. I recently got this tiki from Maui from the carver that I get most of my tikis from. This is Kane. According to the tiki carver Kane is not carved in tiki form very often. I've never seen a tiki like this and that's probably why. This representation of Kane has a very angular shape and a tall headdress. I'm going to try and replicate the design the best I can. I'm only going to change a few things slightly. I'm going to design a little different headdress. I hope I can pull this one off. This tiki is a little different then the other tiki designs I've been carving. I just need to draw a few more guidelines in pencil and I'll start carving.

I started doing some carving on this blank yesterday. I have to say that I bit off more then I can carve with this one. I'm up to the challenge of carving hard woods but this one is to hard. It has an interlocking grain that never stops. It's like trying to carve hard frozen ice cream with a spoon. It's a very strange wood. It's not overly oily but the wood chips even stick to the chisel at times. The other hard woods I've been carving would at least carve with a sharp straight chisel with the grain or at a diagonal without a mallet. You can't do that with Quena. I do almost all my carving with mallet work but some hand chiseling is done. I think I'm going to have a change of plans and carve a different wood with a new tiki design. About the only thing this wood has going for it is that it smells good.

I have found with trying different woods definitely have different purposes. Just because its good with power tools doesn't always translate into good with hand tools. If you are looking for challenges with hand tools, try pushing your creativity with a nice piece of Bass wood.

Hello everyone, I'm back again. I've been busy with other hobbies. I haven't forgot about tiki carving. I got a piece of black walnut ready to carve during the winter. It's just been sitting on my bench looking at me waiting to be carved. This piece of wood started out as a 6"x6"x12" block of wood. I ended up cutting a lot of wood off of it and rounded the front. That was a lot of work.

I decided not to carve a headdress on this tiki. This piece of wood has some really interesting grain patterns throughout the whole carving. That's probably due to this piece of wood being cut near the pit of the tree. It also had some checking issues but I was able to remove most of the biggest splits that where on the back. I designed my layout and cuts accordingly. This was a problematic discounted turning vase blank that could not of been turned. I carved it into a tiki as a challenge despite its problems.